After a while you look at your collected sketches and think OMG all my buildings look the same.

Sketching out the idea process - not sure if any of these will be in the final product

This is caused mostly by the constraints of making sure the design is legible and that they fit on a 1inch d6. In search of inspiration I decided to experiment with roof shapes and turning them into 3D buildings using sketchup. Enjoy...

Monday, 27 October 2014

Inkwell Ideas head honcho Joe Wetzel has gathered together a few of the RPG communities morphing cartographers, myself included, and is kickstarting a version of his popular Dungeonmorph Dice but this time with city designs.

The aim is to produce a set of 5 dice with which you'll can quickly "roll up" your own city map. There's pledge levels for all sizes of pockets with PDF/Font versions available from $5 and a set of dice for only $20. They're pretty substantial at 1 inch square (so have dictatorial thunk of authority when they hit the table). Unlike a lot of custom dice which might just predict the weather, random
direction or what body part you've hit, these also function as regular
dice and are pretty unique.

The first set is a mix of City/Village designs, but the project has far higher aspirations and includes stretch goals to create further sets with designs for Ruins, City Walls and Harbours. The more money Joe can raise, the more designs he can get into production and the more variety you can create. With plenty of stretch goals to unlock on the way like free bonus dice and dice trays available, it's a win win situation!

Pull them out in your group and hear your friends gasp in amazement as they lust after your cool new dice, buy them for your roleplaying partner as a gift, they'll love you all the more for it.

Tuesday, 21 October 2014

In some bizarre twist of history the vikings have once again sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and delivered my Codex Nordica Kickstarter Thane bundle. There's a lot of stuff to digest but at the moment I am a happy Di Sma Undr Jordi (see page 35).

Monday, 20 October 2014

I guess sometimes I can be accused of sleeping under a rock when it comes to the latest US TV shows, but I bet I'm not the only one. Which is why I just have to share the love for Adult Swim's Rick and Morty.

An example of what happens in just about every episode.

Created by voice actor and director Justin Roiland, who some might recognise as the voice of Adventure Time's "Lemongrab", and Dan Harmon, creator of the hit sit com "Community". Rick and Morty is an adult sci-fi cartoon series following the mind bending, dimension hopping adventures of sociopathic alcoholic scientist Rick and his 14 year old grandson Morty.

A show of two halves, each episode finds Rick and Morty on some wild adventure whilst his family (unemployed ad exec dad Jerry, horse surgeon mom Beth and unpopular sister Summer) are often left to deal with the unintended consequences of one of Rick's devices.

Bizarre ideas are the meat and potatoes of this show and no trope is safe. Season 1 has seen cyborg dog revolution, a contagious love virus / preying mantis / Cronenberg monster apocalypse, inception dream walking, alien abduction, a Rick and Morty multiverse, sex robots and alien child rearing to name just a few.

Meanwhile Jerry and Beth struggle to keep their marriage alive, as Dan Harmon puts it, "the nature of their relationship is that it's always 1 minute from ending" and Summer stives to improve her social position from "not super hot/super popular" high school girl whilst being the result of the "unwanted pregnancy" that keeps her parents together.

The language and visuals are as adult and bizarre as they can be and dialogue is often delivered at a breakneck pace in order to cram as much action in as humanly possible. The casting is spot on from regular voice performers Justin Roiland (Rick/Morty), Chris Parnell (Jerry), Spencer Grammer (Summer), Sarah Chalke (Beth) to the great vocal cameos delivered by Alfred Molina, Dana Carvey, David Cross, Rich Fulcher, Claudia Black, Virginia Hey, John Oliver and Cree Summer.

The show is a definite must see and has been picked up for a second series scheduled to air in early 2015 along with a spin-off comic book. The "point and click" style game "Rick and Morty's Rushed Licensed Adventure" is also available to play on the adultswim website.

With all this richness it should only be a matter of time before someone writes a Fiasco playset based on this universe and it's one setting that most definitely has to go "gonzo"... every single time.

Thursday, 16 October 2014

Following on from yesterdays Geomorph related post, I've been following the exploits of the Dungeon Crafting crowd (The DM's Craft, TheDMGInfo and AJ Pickett) on YouTube for a while now and have been especially entertained by The DMG Info's latest series "Delving The Dark".

It's essentially, a video "walk-through" of a dungeon that Gareth has created using his take on DM Scotty's 2.5D tile system. Each episode describes a single room and its contents. The descriptions are system neutral and concise and the plot detail offered adds enough spice to keep the viewer and potential DM interested.

Whilst watching Level 1 Area 16/20, Gareth casually dropped that there were at least 5 levels to this dungeon... Woah, that's gonna be a pretty sweet little series of vids.

To avoid spoilers, this is definitely one for DMs only and it's a great showcase for how the 2.5D dungeon tiles can be used in your game.

Wednesday, 15 October 2014

My RPG club, The Hobbit's Hole, runs an annual memorial tournament in honour of one of its founding members called the Manic Trophy.

This year it's my turn to host the game and I'll be putting on a simple dungeon crawl game. I'm musing over the rules at the moment but here's my outline:

PREMISE
My aim is to have a 3 to 5 player competitive dungeon crawl lasting no more than 45 minutes, in the style of the boardgame Dungeon Quest. Players start on the same tile, like in Drakon, each time they move they reveal a new tile and orient it as they see
fit discovering the dungeon as they go. The final tile holds the great treasure and the Boss Monster.

I like the idea of having a finite number of "moves" to a game, everyone has an equal chance the player skill element comes from trying to push your luck or deciding to flee. I've played games like Lost Cities which use this sort of "push your luck" mechanic and enjoyed them immensely.

I need quick and dirty "trump" style resolution so I'm going to base everything around a regular deck of playing cards. Players get to choose their card whereas the DM draws randomly from a deck.

To represent levels of the dungeon the DM deck is divided into 3 stacks; Level 1(cards numbered 2 to 6), Level 2 (cards 7 to J) and Level 3 cards (Q to A). I have 24 tiles in the game so the first 10 tiles represent Level 1, the next 10 Level 2 and the last 4 are Level 3.

STATS & CHARACTER GENERATION

Looking at the card suit symbols we have:

HEARTS - Look like a heart so should represent life force or vitality, these cards are used for all tests of strength and stamina.

CLUBS -
Look like a tree and sort of like a brain so these represent knowledge
and intelligence.

DIAMONDS - Looks sharp like a sword so these cards are used to represent Melee combat ability.

SPADES - Look like an arrowhead so these cards are used for all Missile attacks and Dexterity based skill checks.

JOKERS
- Each player
gets one of these to use during the game to automatically succeed at a
challenge or to inflict an instant kill. However, Jokers cannot be used to defeat the BOSS MONSTER, unused jokers are worth 15 points at the end of the game.

Players get to choose their class and pick up the relevant 2 suits of cards as follows:

Warrior - ♥ (Strength) and ♦ (Melee)

Wizard - ♣ (Intelligence) and ♠ (Missile)

Thief - ♠ (Dexterity) and ♣ (Intelligence)

Ranger - ♠ (Missile) and ♦ (Melee)

Cleric - ♣ (Intelligence) and ♦ (Melee)

Additional Character Classes contributed by Stu Rat

Barbarian - ♥ (Strength) and ♠ (Dexterity)

Bandit - ♥ (Strength) and ♣ (Intelligence)

Monk - ♣ (Intelligence) and ♥ (Strength)

Archer - ♠ (Missile) and ♥ (Strength)

Warlord - ♦ (Melee) and ♣ (Intelligence)

Gladiator - ♦ (Melee) and ♥ (Strength)

Swashbuckler - ♦ (Melee) and ♠ (Dexterity)

The first suit is their PRIMARY stat, e.g. Warriors ♥ (Strength) and is used to break ties.

ENCOUNTERS

Each time players move onto a new tile they will encounter either a monster, a trap or need to search for a treasure.

MONSTER ENCOUNTER: Players may either FIGHT using ♦ (Melee) or ♠ (Missile) or EVADE using ♣ (Intelligence) or ♥ (Stamina). If a player succeeds in a fight the monster is killed and a treasure awarded. If a player succeeds in evading the player can move to the next tile but the monster remains and no treasure is awarded.

TRAP ENCOUNTERS: Players may either DISABLE using ♣ (Intelligence) or ♠ (Dexterity) or EVADE using ♥ (Strength) or ♦ (Melee). If a trap is disabled it is removed from the game and the player gets a reward otherwise the trap remains.

NO ENCOUNTER: Empty tiles can be searched by any player using any card. So there is merit in just following the first player and scratching around in the room once they've defeated all the monsters.

As detailed above, players resolve encounters by choosing a card and comparing it with the DMs Card, whichever is higher wins. Players who fail an encounter must discard an extra card at random from whichever suit they used in the encounter. In the event of ties a player who used their primary stat always wins, if they used their secondary stat they always lose.
I'm going to decide monster or trap based on a coin flip. Heads it's a Monster, tails its a Trap, but you could design specific traps for each tile design you have.

TREASURE

Treasures are awarded for defeating monsters, disabling traps or succeeding in search rolls. They are either drawn randomly from a seperate deck or if you want the rewards to increase in level as the challenges increase you can just award the challenge card.

THE BOSS MONSTER

When the last tile is drawn, the players have reached the end of the dungeon. Any players who can move their character onto this tile in their next turn can attempt to defeat the boss monster either collectively as a group or try it on their own. Players are reminded that the boss monster is an instant kill event and failure will result in death. There's no such thing as a dead Hero in this game.

In either case they choose a card as normal, excluding Jokers. However, the boss monster gets to shuffle all the remaining challenge decks together and draws 1 card plus 1 card for each party member in the combat and discards the lowest card.

Players are awarded 2 treasures each for defeating the boss monster.

FLEEING

Players can FLEE the dungeon before drawing a new tile and keep
any treasure cards they have amassed so far. If their route out of the
dungeon is blocked by a monster they must discard a card at random as
they flee.

TURN ORDER

Players determine their Initiative order by choosing one card from their hand. Highest goes first, in the event of ties the player who used a primary stat card wins, all others discard and redraw.

1. FLEE - Players may decide to flee the dungeon or continue exploring.

2. MOVE - Move through an open exit and reveal the next tile.

3. ENCOUNTER - Each player resolves the encounter as outlined above.

4. NEXT TURN - Play moves to the player with the next highest initiative.

SCORING

Once the boss monster has been defeated (or all players have fled the dungeon) the game is over and scoring occurs.

1. DEAD players score 1 point for each unused stat card in their hand (+ 15 points for an unused joker).

2. SURVIVING players score 1 point for each secondary stat card (+ 15 points for an unused joker) + the face value of any primary stat cards remaining + the face value of any treasure rewarded.